


Willa, Burning

by burglebezzlement



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Both literally and figuratively, Darkfic, F/F, Ghosts, Horror, Nightmares, Peacemaker, Please see end notes for detailed content warnings, References to past abuse by Ward Earp, Sibling Incest, Spoilers through the end of S1, Treat, gummy bears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8257618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: After the showdown at the gate to the Ghost River Triangle, Wynonna finds herself haunted by Willa’s memory… or maybe by something more.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



> Please see end notes for detailed content warnings.

Wynonna’s had so many nightmares over the years. So much material for her brain to chew up and spit out to horrify her. Momma leaving, and the attack on the Homestead. Uncle Curtis’s head torn off and missing, gone God knows where. In Wynonna’s dreams his head comes back and asks her why she hasn’t found him yet.

The attacks on the Homestead. Waverly, shot. Willa, shooting Nicole. Waverly, possessed by the black ooze.

Willa.

After the boundary — after the Solstice — Wynonna’s dreams catch up fast. She starts reliving the moment when she had to shoot her sister in the head. 

It’s enough to make you sleep half a night. Enough to make you wake up and start patrolling your own house, making sure that your little sister’s not going darkside again.

* * *

It takes Wynonna some time to notice when the Willa in her dreams shifts, from that sobbing, shot Willa who couldn’t go home again. 

This Willa has icy-blue eyes, and she starts slipping in, around the corners of Wynonna’s other dreams. “You don’t have to stay here, baby girl,” she says, taking Wynonna’s hand in hers and leading her away from another dream where Curtis’s severed head sobs at her, asking her to find him and bring him back to Gus.

Dream-Willa leads Wynonna through a confusion of hallways and into the barn at the Homestead.

It’s the barn as Wynonna remembers it, from their childhood. Doc’s bed is missing. The smell of hay is fresh, not stale and musty the way it is in reality.

Willa turns. “It’s okay, baby girl,” she says, and in the dream, Wynonna lets her older sister take her in her arms, like she used to, back when they were kids. Wynonna cries on her shoulder and Willa’s hands make slow, sure circles on her back.

She sleeps all the way through the night.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Wynonna spends her days frantically trying to find a way to get Dolls back, and her nights waiting for dream-Willa with the ice blue eyes to rescue her from her memories. 

“You didn’t have blue eyes when you were alive,” Wynonna says, one night, after dream-Willa’s brought her to Willa’s childhood bedroom. It looks like it does now, except less faded, less dusty.

“I didn’t have a lot of things when I was alive,” dream-Willa says, and the room shifts around them, to a bare-boarded room with creaking floors. 

Wynonna hasn’t been to the Treehouse, only heard Waverly describe it. She didn’t want to know. But Waverly must have described it well, because it feels like a real place, in Wynonna’s dream — a neat little bed and a stove in the corner. A confusion of books, all old and bound with cloth or leather. Walls with slanting boards letting in cold air. Windows with a view that looks out for miles, over the prairie. 

“I was here for so many years,” Dream-Willa says, looking around, and then she shakes her head and they’re spinning off the porch of the treehouse and floating into a sunrise together. “So easy, in here.”

* * *

Wynonna’s in the barn the first time she sees Willa while she’s awake.

“It’s not possible,” she whispers to herself, and then Willa turns. Wynonna sees her eyes, ice-blue, and shakes her head and tries to remember that it’s a dream.

“It’s not a dream,” Willa says, sitting there at the end of Doc’s bed, and then she fades away while Wynonna watches.

“Wynonna?”

The voice comes from behind her, and Wynonna jumps like someone’s run an ice cube down her spine.

“Doc!” she says, spinning and falling forward to hug him in relief. “I’m awake, right?”

Doc hugs back, and then pulls away to look at her. “I believe I should express concern. Are you —”

“My mind playing tricks on me,” Wynonna says. She can still feel her heart pounding.

* * *

Wynonna keeps catching glimpses of Willa, always when she’s alone. Always with those ice-blue eyes. She fades out when Wynonna sees her, and the fire in those eyes is the last thing to fade.

One evening Wynonna goes upstairs to Willa’s old bed to sleep. Waverly has opinions about Wynonna sleeping on the couch every night, and the more Wynonna dreams about Willa, the more reasonable it seems, to sleep in Willa’s bed. They way they did when they were kids.

She wakes up one night to the feeling of someone else in the room, someone else with her. It should be scary, but instead, Wynonna feels a deep sense of peace.

“Don’t look at me,” Willa says, and Wynonna feels someone sit down beside her, feels the mattress dip between them. 

“I’m still dreaming,” Wynonna says. Not really asking. It’s impossible for Willa to be here, no matter what Wynonna’s been dreaming. No matter how Wynonna’s eyes have been playing tricks on her.

Willa’s quiet for a moment, and Wynonna can feel the bed shift. “Maybe.”

“I miss you so much,” Wynonna says, into the darkness. It’s easier, without Willa’s ice-blue eyes on her own. “I missed you every single day you were gone. I miss you every single day I remember how we got you back.” She’s trying not to cry, but her voice is choked. “I… Willa.”

Wynonna feels a ghost hand on her back, and she startles but then relaxes, as Willa starts stroking her back the way she used to, back when they were kids, hiding together in Willa’s room while Daddy raged and Momma cried downstairs.

* * *

Willa’s reappearance is the sort of thing Wynonna would ask Dolls about, if she had Dolls to ask, but Dolls is still being held by Black Badge. And she can’t tell Waverly. Even if Waverly didn’t hate Willa, for what she did to Nicole. There are things Waverly doesn’t know about from when Willa and Wynonna were kids. There are things Waverly can’t know about, because Wynonna can’t handle the idea of her little sister finding out what Willa and Wynonna were to one another, back then. 

And it’s just so _nice_. Wynonna knows she’s fooling herself, but it’s so nice to think that maybe some part of Willa could have survived. That some part of Willa could not hate her.

* * *

Wynonna has the dream again — the Solstice boundary dream, and she watches Peacemaker’s barrel turn ice-blue in her hands before she shoots Willa, in the face, right between her hazel eyes.

 _You can never really go home again._ In real life, Wynonna had to run, making it over the Ghost River Triangle boundary just before she got taken like Willa, but here in the dream, she stays standing. Watches as Willa’s face rots away, in fast motion, leaving only a skeleton behind, grinning horribly with broken teeth, and then the tentacle monster is coming for Wynonna.

Willa’s voice comes from behind her, clear and cold. “Stop.”

Wynonna turns, and Willa’s there, pale blue eyes blazing in her face. “You don’t have to do this,” she says, and Wynonna takes her hand and they’re spinning away through the Ghost River Triangle, to the barn.

The hay smells sweet and when Wynonna looks down, she’s a younger version of herself, the age she was just before Willa got taken. She’s sitting in the hayloft. 

Willa looks up from below, and it’s the ice-blue eyes in the face of a younger Willa, the way Wynonna remembers her.

“I’ve got gummy bears,” Willa says, and passes them up to Wynonna. 

Wynonna takes them, and eats a few, and then Willa joins her in the loft. Starts playing at making the gummy bears make out with one another.  
   
She remembers this day, Wynonna thinks, watching Willa and thinking about — the thing she couldn’t mention, not to live Willa. Not when she wasn’t sure if Willa remembered. What Willa might think of it.

Dream Willa remembers, and turns to Wynonna with a smile. 

“You thought I didn’t remember,” she says.

“It wasn’t just the gummy bears you wanted to make out with,” Wynonna says, not taking her eyes off of Willa.

While she watches, Willa shifts, morphs, and it’s Willa the way Wynonna knew her as an adult. (The way she didn’t know her. Not really.) Long brown hair. Wide cheekbones, like Waverly’s. Mouth that looks so much like what Wynonna remembers —

Wynonna’s not sure who leans forward first, but she’s got her hand fisted in Willa’s hair, and it feels real under her hands. She kisses Willa’s forehead and then Willa lifts her face and Wynonna’s kissing Willa’s mouth, like they did when they were kids. The smell of hay is sweet around them and Wynonna just wants to stay here, in this dream, holding Willa close and kissing her, the closest they could be.

 _Stay with me,_ Wynonna thinks, like a litany, her arms around her sister. _Stay with me, stay with me._

* * *

Waverly goes from relieved that Wynonna is sleeping, in a bed, and normal hours, to concerned at how much Wynonna’s sleeping. How many hours she’s spending in bed, eyes shut, not working on getting Dolls back. Not working on killing Revenants.

There are still Revenants to kill, but Wynonna’s avenged the worse of them. She’s killed Bobo and she’s killed the Seven and as much as she wants Dolls back, it’s hard imagining a way to go up against the Black Badge.

Wynonna’s nightmares no longer scare her. Now, when Willa’s face begins to melt, when Curtis’s head starts screaming, when Daddy gets dragged away and Wynonna shoots him in the back — now she waits, watching, for the dream-Willa with the ice blue eyes to come, to rescue her from the nightmare. 

“I’m worried about you,” Waverly says one morning. (It’s still morning because Wynonna checked. She dragged herself out of bed at a quarter to noon, just so Waverly couldn’t complain about her sleeping into the afternoon.)

“I’m fine,” Wynonna says, scrunching her nose at Waverly over her bowl of cereal.

“You’re not fine,” Waverly says, stubborn as any Earp. “You’ve got dark circles under your eyes and you’re sleeping fifteen hours a night. I think something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Wynonna puts her cereal bowl in the sink and sits back down. “What’s on the program for today?”

A few days later, Waverly drags her to a doctor’s office, and Wynonna doesn’t have the energy to protest. But her checkup is fine. All the bloodwork comes back normal.

“I told you I was fine,” Wynonna says on the drive back. “Peak physical health.”

Waverly’s eyes say she still thinks something’s wrong, but she doesn’t say anything. 

Wynonna’s more than fine. Willa’s back, the way Wynonna remembered her. And if her blue eyes were starting at first, well, now Wynonna’s expecting to see them.

* * *

“I wish you were real,” Wynonna mumbles one night. In her dream, she’s sleepy, on the bed in Willa’s old room. Willa holds her close.

“I am real,” Willa says, and there’s a flash of blue light. “I’m as real as you are.”

Wynonna reaches up, kisses her again, slow, desperate. Wishing things had been different. Wishing they’d been different people.

There’s a tingling in her hands as she runs them over Willa, an electricity in her fingertips as she skims them over Willa’s skin. She feels the bed creak underneath her and realizes that she doesn’t know if she’s asleep or awake. She reaches up for Willa’s face, running her thumb over her cheek and then leaning in, by touch alone, to kiss her again, and decides she doesn’t care. She just wants Willa.

“I never stopped loving you,” Wynonna says, while Willa sucks on her neck, a place Wynonna thinks will be bruised in the morning.

“Less talking now,” Willa says, leaning back up, and Wynonna keeps her eyes screwed shut, not wanting to know if this is real or a dream.

There’s nowhere she fits like she fits with her sister. Her sister, who she loves.

Her sister, who she killed.

* * *

When Wynonna wakes up, Willa’s on the other end of the room, looking into a mirror over the dresser.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she says. 

The words are friendly, but there’s an edge in her voice, a hardness that hasn’t been there with dream Willa.

Wynonna raises her hand to her neck, puts her thumb on the place where Willa sucked a mark. Nothing.

“Willa?” She tries to push the bedclothes back. “What’s going on?”

Willa sits down at the other end of the bed. The mattress dips under her weight.

“Good news, bad news, sis,” she says. “Well. I say bad news. It’s mostly just bad news for you.”

Wynonna sits up and tries to put a hand to Willa’s cheek, but her hand goes right through.

 _Willa’s a ghost_ , Wynonna thinks, but then she tries to push the quilt off her body and her hand slides right through.

Wynonna’s heart should be racing, but instead, she just feels dull. Foggy. 

“What did you do to me?”

“It’s what you let me do to you,” Willa says, her voice hard.

Wynonna tries again to push off the bed, but her hands slide through the bedclothes, slide through the mattress. She can’t — she can move, but she can’t touch anything. Can’t feel her own body.

“Shouldn’t have let me in,” Willa says, her voice mocking. She gets up and walks to the door.

“This isn’t going to work,” Wynonna says. “Waverly will find you. You tried to kill Nicole. She’s never going to forgive you for that.”

“They’ll just think you’re me, silly,” Willa says, and for a moment, her face shifts. It’s Wynonna’s blue eyes she has, and Wynonna’s face —

Wynonna fights through the panic. Through the fog. “You can’t do this,” she says. “You’re my sister.”

Willa’s eyes go ice-hard. “Like that stopped you from killing me.”

“Willa.”

Wynonna’s not sure what she’s hoping for, but somewhere in there, she still believes that Willa’s her sister. The sister she remembers, from the barn, who loved her more than anything. 

Willa turns back from the doorway. Her eyes flash, a hard, icy blue. 

“You always were a sucker.”

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed content notes: Contains sibling incest and (non-graphic) references to past abuse by Ward Earp. Wynonna does not know whether the Willa she is interacting with is real; because of this, some scenes could be interpreted as involving dubious consent. Finally, please note that the ending is unhappy, with Wynonna turned into a ghost and Willa taking her place/life.


End file.
